Hands Like Bird Snatchers
by OCD ADD Goldfish
Summary: Luna contemplates the fact, that Snape has hands for bird snatching. Snape is just confused. Pre-Snuna. Takes place during DH. COMPLETE.


**Disclaimer:** World of H. P. not mine.

**A/n:** For Round 4 of The Quidditch League Competition (Season 2)

_Team:_ Falmouth Falcons

_Position:_ 2nd Chaser

**Round Prompts:** (word) ground; (word) confused; (word) bird.

* * *

**~x~X~x~  
Hands Like Bird Snatchers  
~x~X~x~**

Hands; Luna loved hands. They were, as far as she could tell, honest. Hands couldn't lie, the way eyes and smiles could.

But the loveliest hands she'd ever seen, belonged to none other than Severus Snape. He had hands that she could watch, mesmerized, for hours at a time and never note the passage of time. They were so hypnotic, moved in such practiced but fluid and sharp movements that were full of grace and subtle strength...

And Luna fell in love with those hands, before she fell in love with anything else.

They weren't perfect hands... they were stained and even scarred, like Snape's soul. The skin was somewhat roughened, and calloused with work, but this only added character to the pale and still elegant extremities.

Snape had long, slender fingers, that reminded her of the long legs of spiders. And in spite of Snape's questionable hygiene as most liked to comment on due to the state of his hair and teeth, the nails on his fingers were always perfectly clean, and cut neatly short.

Luna thought, if ever one wanted to take the measure of a person, all they had to look at was their hands.

Snape had honest hands.

X

Luna didn't have much of a chance to study Snape's hands in sixth year, being as he was Headmaster now.

On a late Autumn Sunday, Luna found herself escaping the oppressive atmosphere of the castle for the dark, but at least open-spaced grounds of the Forbidden Forrest. She was sitting on a log, watching in fascination as an Acromantula roughly the size of a puppy, lay in wait, hidden under the foliage of bush at the base of a tree.

She _almost_ didn't feel the intrusion into the small clearing in which she sat, the October sun only just filtering through the leaves high overhead.

"You should not be out here, Miss Lovegood," his voice... that was another thing lovely about him, Luna thought as she cocked her head so that her right ear was nearer to the direction where his voice had emanated.

His tone of voice was dark and heavy like a sedative, but rich and full of dark light, like thunder and lightning.

"But it's such a lovely day to birdwatch," Luna said, turning her large gaze slowly to him, her lilting sing-song voice in direct contrast to their shadowed surroundings.

"It's fall," he stated in deadpan, giving Luna an impatient and dull stare. Luna merely smiled at him and patted the log beside her.

"Come and watch with me, sir," she offered; to help him because he was clearly confused.

"I will do nothing of the sort," Snape replied with a snort, and Luna could just hear the amusement that was hidden so well by his dark tones. "You must return to the castle, Miss Lovegood. The Forbidden Forest is dangerous."

"The castle is dangerous," she replied right back in distant and vague tones, before turning to Snape once more and offering him a dreamy smile. "But I feel safe with you around."

X

He was sitting next to her then, stiffly and quiet, staring forward in confusion; his gaze trying to see whatever it was that her protuberant silvery-blue orbs were seeing.

And then a bird flitted down to the ground and Luna took hold of his hand nearest to her.

Her hands were small, delicate... and shockingly cool against his own. Briefly, he turned to look at his dotty, Ravenclaw student with a frown, wondering at the fact that her hands were so cool, that they distracted him from the impropriety of the fact that a student was touching him.

"Look," she breathed in her ethereal voice, that always sent a shiver through his being. Severus was half-convinced that the wispy-haired blonde with eyes like clear-skies with silvery clouds was some kind of seraph. She was simply too otherworldly and too pure to be human.

Severus turned to stare at the bird that landed on the ground not far from where they sat. He watched nonplussed, wondering what was so entertaining or fascinating.

He could have jumped out of his skin if he were not always so tightly wound, when the curious bird skipped too close to a bush, where an Acromantuala suddenly lunged, long legs trapping the blue-feathered bird.

Before his eyes and very quickly, the Acromantula incapacitated it's frail victim; it's venom paralyzed or killed the pretty bird, and long legs quickly spun it, encasing the bird in a cocoon of the spider's silk.

Turning slowly, Severus stared at the girl, whose eyes were not on the violent act of nature, but were instead locked on the hand which she'd captured in her own.

He didn't know then the girl had placed his hand in her lap, between her own where it was now palm up.

"What are you doing?" he asked quietly, stiff as she used her right hand to trace the lines etched into his palm.

Severus didn't like to be touched; he certainly never tolerated a student placing their hands on him. However, for reasons he could not fathom, he couldn't bring himself to snatch his hand from the girl who was, as far as he could see, an innocent.

"Your spidery hands are my study," she lilted with a smile on her face, speaking as always in nonsensical riddles. "They are strong, honest, and true... but they are also powerful. Hypnotizing. Intoxicating and deadly."

Severus frowned, wondering what the girl was saying or driving at. Was she reading his palm, was this some Divination crap that had caught her fancy? Severus wouldn't really put it past her.

"They're hands," he said as if to say, 'they are _just_ hands and nothing more'.

Luna smiled and looked up at him then, her eyes -filled with so much wisdom- clashing with his own soul-searching tunnels of darkness.

And for once, Severus knew what it might be like for others, when he stared at them with his fathomless eyes that seemed to root through the very core of you, to the deepest places inside. And was he not a man of courage, he might have looked away.

Her stare was not as intrusive as the all-knowing-gaze of Albus Dumbledore, but rather like a film of cool water.

And then Luna opened her mouth to speak, and broke the spell while bewildering him as always.

"You have bird-snatching hands."

Because she could not tell him, she'd long placed her heart in his hands.

**~END~**


End file.
